ooc; history
FINISHED
Current Word Count: 2161
After the demise of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum around the 1300s, Anatolia (at this point a young Turkey) was divided into numerous independent states. By the 1300s, the Byzantine Empire had lost a majority of its provinces to ten Ghazi principalities. One of the Ghazi emirates, lead by Osman I in Western Anatolia, extended the frontiers of Ottoman settlement towards the edge of the Byzantine. The Capital was moved to Bursa, he shaped the early political development of the nation. During his life and death, Osman was admired as a strong ruler. In the century after Osman's death, Ottoman rule began to extend of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans. When Thessaloniki was captured in 1387, along with the Turkish victory at the Battle of Kosovo marked the end of Serbian power and paved the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe. The last large-scale crusade, The Battle of Nicopolis, failed to stop the advance of the Ottomans. With the extension of Turkish domonation, the conquest of Constantinople became a crucial goal. While the Empire controlled nearly all of the former Byzantine lands, the Byzantines were briefly relieved when Tamerlane invaded Anitolia with the Battle of Ankara in 1402 and took Sultan Bayezid I as prisoner.
The capture of Bayezid I threw the Turks into disorder, causing the state to fall into an 11-year civil war as Bayezid's sons fought over succession. The war ended when Mehmed I ermerged as the new sultan and restored power, bringing an end to the Interregnum. His Grandson recognized the state and military, and demonstrated his prowess by capturing Constantinople in 1453 at the age of 21. The city then became the new capital of the Ottoman Empire. The Empire's conquest cemted the statues of the Empire as the preeminent power in Southeastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. During this time, the Ottoman Empire had taken a step into a long period of expansion and conquest. The Empire would prosper under the rule of a line of effective sultans. Semlin I dramaticaly expanded the Empire's eastern and southern frontiers by defeating Shah Ismail of Safavid Persia, and established Ottoman rule in Egypt and a naval presence on the Red Sea. After this, a challenge started between the Portuguese Empire and the Ottoman Empire to become the top power in the region.
Selim's successor, Sulemin the Magnificent expanded further upon Selim's conquests. After he capturd Belgrade in 1521, he conquered the Southern and Central parts of the Kingdom of Hungary and established rule in the territory of present-day Hungary and other central european territories. He then attacked Vienna in 1529, but failed to take the city after winter forced his retreat. Another attack was planned in 1532, but it was repulsed at the Fortress of Guns. In 1543 after further advances, the Hasburg ruler Ferdinand recognized Ottoman rise in Hungary in '47. During the reign of Suleiman, Wallachia and Moldavia became tributary principalities of the Ottoman Empire, while in the East, the Ottoman's took Baghdad from the Persians to gain control of Mesopotamia and naval access to the Persian Gulf.
As the 16th Century went by, the Empire's naval strength was challenged by the growing sea powers of Western Europe (Portugal in particular) in the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean, and Spice Islands. Because the Ottomans blocked sea-lanes to the East and South, other European powers were forced to find another way to the silk and spice routes, also under Ottoman control. On land, the Ottomans were preoccupied by military campaigns on Persia and Austria. The strain of the conflicts on the Empire's rescources rendered its sea efforts unsuccessful.
During this time, Europe made an effort to curb the Ottoman's control of trade routes, and Western Euripean states began to circumvent the trade monopoly by creating their own routes to Asia. With the influx of Spanish Silver from the new world, a sharp devaluation of the Ottoman currency had a serious negative consequence at all levels of society. After burning Moscow in 1571, the Crimean khan Devlet I Giray, supported by the Ottomans, formed a plan of full conquest of the Russian state. In the next year, the invasion was repeated but repelled at the Battle of Molodi. In Southern Europe, a coalition of Catholic powers formed an alliance to challange the Ottoman's naval strength in the Mediterranean. Their victory over their fleet at the Battle of Lepanto in '71 was a startling blow to the image of the Ottoman's invincibility.
From 1648 to 1656, the Sultanate of Women was a period in which the polotical influence of the Imperial Harem was dominant, as mothers of young sultans exercised power on behalf of their sons. it was not holly unprecedented; Hurrem Sultan, who established herself in the 1530s as Nurbanu's successor, was described as 'a woman of the utmost goodness, courage, and wisdom despite the fact that she thwarted some while rewarding others'. However, the inadequacy of Ibrahim I and the minority accession of Mohammed IV in 1646 created a crisis of rule. This period gave way to the Köprülü Era, which effective control of the Empire was exercised by a sequence of Grand Vixiers from the Köprülü family. The Köprülü Vizierate saw renewed military success with power restored in Transylvania, the conquest of Crete completed in 1669, and expansion into Polish southern Ukraine with the strongholds of Khotin and Kamianets-Podilskyi and the territory of Podolia ceding to Ottoman control in 1676. This period came to an end when Grand Vizer Kara Mustafa Pasha led a huge army to attempt a second siege of Vienna in 1683. The final assault being fatally delayed, the Ottoman forces were swept away by Hasburg, German and Polish forces spearheaded by the Polish King, Jan Sobieski. Only two Sultans in this perioid exercised a strong political and military control of the Empire; Murad IV, who recaptured Yerevan and Baghdad, and Mustafa II who lead the Ottoman counter attack if 1695-96 against the Hasburgs in Hungary.
During the stagnation period, most of the Balkans territory was ceded to Austria, while certain areas like Egypt and Algeria became independent in all but name and came under the influence of Britain and France. A series of wars were also fought between Russia and the Ottoman Empire from the 18th to the 19th century. The period of Ottoman stagnation is characterized as an era of failed reforms. The Tulip Era, named for Ahmed III's love of the tulip flower, the Empire's policy towards Europe underwent a shift. The area was peaceful from 1718 to 1730, after the Ottoman's victory against Russia in 1711 and the following Treaty of Passarowitz brought a pause in warfare. Other tenative reforms were also enacted such as lower taxes. Military reforms began with Selim III who made the first major attempt to modernize the army along European lines, but the efforts were hampered by reactionary movements; partly from the religious leadership, but mainly from the Janissary corps. Jealous of their privileges and opposed to change, they created a Janissary revolt. Selim's efforts cost him not only his throne, but his life too. This was resolved however in a spectacular and bloody fashion by Bahmud II who massacred the Janissary corps in 1826.
The decline of the Ottoman Empire is characterized by an era of modern times; it lost territory on all fronts, and administrative instability due to the breakdown of centralized government despite efforts of reform and organization such as the Tanzimat. During this time, the Empire faced challenges defending itself against invasions and occupations, and as a result, ceased to enter conflicts alone and formed alliances with France, Netherlands, the UK, and Russia. The Crimean War caused an exodus of the Crimean Tatars. During the Tanzimat period, constitutional reforms led to a dairly modern constripted army, banking system reforms, and the replacement of guilds with modern factories. Christian millets also gained privileges, such as in the Armanian National Constitution and the newly formed Armenian National Assembly. The period peaked with the Kanûn-ı Esâsî, written by members of the Young Ottomans. Through a military coup in 1876, the Young Ottomans forced Sultan Abdülaziz to abdicate in favor of Murad V. However, he was mentally ill and was deposed within a few months.
The rise of nationalism swept through many countries in the 19th century, and the Ottoman Empire wasn't immune to this. A burgeoning national consciousness, paired with a growing sense of ethnic nationalism, made nationalistic thought one of the most significant Western ideas imported to the Ottoman Empire. In 1821. the 1st Hellenic Republic was teh first Balkan country to declare itself independent from the Empire and was recognized by the Porte in 1829 after the Greek War of Independence. Cyprus was rented to the British in 1878 in exchange for favores at the Congress of Berlin and Egypt, who had been previously occupied by Napoleon's forces in 1798, was occupied in 1882 by British Forces on the pretext of bringing order. They remained as Ottoman provinces until the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers of WWI in 1914, and Britain annexed these two provinces and Cyprus as a response. Other provinces were lost between 1830 and 1912, starting from Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. The Armenians, who were granted their own constitution and national assembly with the Tanzimat reforms, pressed the Ottoman governemt for more autonomy. A number of Armenian uprisings took place in Anatolia, leading Abdul Hamid II responding to these uprising and attacks by forming the Hamidiye regiments. From 1894-1896, 100-300,000 Armenians were killed in what would be known as the Hamidian massacres.
The İkinci Meşrûtiyet Devri' began in 1908 with the sultan's annoucement of the resoration of the 1876 constitution and the Ottoman Parliment, marking the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. This era is dominated by the polotices of the Committee of Union and Progress. Profiting from the civil strife, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908, but pulled troops out of the Sanjak of Novi Pazar to avoid a war. With the Italo-Turkish War, the Ottoman Empire lost Libya, the Balkan League declared war against the Ottoman Empire who lost it's Balkan territories except for East Thrace and Edirne with the Balkan Wars in 1912-1913. When the Young Turk government signed a reaty forming the Ottoman-German alliance in 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I, in which it gave safe harbor to two German ships who were fleeing British. These ships--once being put into the Ottoman Navy--attacked the Russian port of Sevastopol, this dragging the Empire into the war side of the Central Powers where it took part in the Middle Eastern theater. While there were numerous victories early on, such as the Battle of Gallipoli and the Siege of Kut, there were setbacks such as the Caucasus Campaign against the Russians which ended in disaster.
In 1915, as the Russian Caucasus Army advanced into Eastern Anatolia with the aid of Armenian volenteer units, the Ottoman government decided to issue the Tehcir Law which started the deportation of the ethnic Armenians, mainly from the provinces closest to the Ottoman-Russian front, resulting in what would later be known as the Armenian Genocide. Through forced marches and massacres, the Armenians were taken from their homelands and sent southwards towards Syria and Mesopotamia. Roughly 600,000 to 1.5 million Armenians perished. (To this day, Turkey will still deny any connection towards this, and if he's questioned, will pretend to not know what the other is talking about). Under the Treaty of Sèvres, the new countries created from the former territories currently number 40, including the TRNC. With the occupation of Constantinople, paired up with the occupation of Smyrna, the Turkish national movement was established and won the Turkish War of Independence under the rule of Mustafa Kemal Pasha. The Sultanate was thrown away in 1922, and the last sultan, Mehmed VI Vahdettin left the country on November 17th. The Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 led to the international recognition of the newly formed 'Republic of Turkey' as the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, and the Republic was officially proclaimed on October 29th, in the newest capital, Ankara.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk ('Father Turk') was the first president of the Republic and introduced many radical reforms. During World War II, Turkey remained neutral until 1945 when it joined the side of the Allies as a ceremonial gesture. Difficulties faced by Greece after the war in quelling a communist rebellion, along with demands by the Soviet Union for military bases, prompted the USA to declare teh Truman Doctrine in '47. After participating with the UN in the Korean conflict, Turkey would join NATO in 1952 and become a bulwark against Soviet expansion into the Mediterranean. A decade of violence on the island of Cyprus and the Greek military coup in '74, overthrowing President Makarios and installing Nikos Sampson as dictator, Turkey invaded the Republic of Cyprus. Nine years later, the TRNC was born--and is only recognized by Turkey.
Current Word Count: 2161
After the demise of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum around the 1300s, Anatolia (at this point a young Turkey) was divided into numerous independent states. By the 1300s, the Byzantine Empire had lost a majority of its provinces to ten Ghazi principalities. One of the Ghazi emirates, lead by Osman I in Western Anatolia, extended the frontiers of Ottoman settlement towards the edge of the Byzantine. The Capital was moved to Bursa, he shaped the early political development of the nation. During his life and death, Osman was admired as a strong ruler. In the century after Osman's death, Ottoman rule began to extend of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans. When Thessaloniki was captured in 1387, along with the Turkish victory at the Battle of Kosovo marked the end of Serbian power and paved the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe. The last large-scale crusade, The Battle of Nicopolis, failed to stop the advance of the Ottomans. With the extension of Turkish domonation, the conquest of Constantinople became a crucial goal. While the Empire controlled nearly all of the former Byzantine lands, the Byzantines were briefly relieved when Tamerlane invaded Anitolia with the Battle of Ankara in 1402 and took Sultan Bayezid I as prisoner.
The capture of Bayezid I threw the Turks into disorder, causing the state to fall into an 11-year civil war as Bayezid's sons fought over succession. The war ended when Mehmed I ermerged as the new sultan and restored power, bringing an end to the Interregnum. His Grandson recognized the state and military, and demonstrated his prowess by capturing Constantinople in 1453 at the age of 21. The city then became the new capital of the Ottoman Empire. The Empire's conquest cemted the statues of the Empire as the preeminent power in Southeastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. During this time, the Ottoman Empire had taken a step into a long period of expansion and conquest. The Empire would prosper under the rule of a line of effective sultans. Semlin I dramaticaly expanded the Empire's eastern and southern frontiers by defeating Shah Ismail of Safavid Persia, and established Ottoman rule in Egypt and a naval presence on the Red Sea. After this, a challenge started between the Portuguese Empire and the Ottoman Empire to become the top power in the region.
Selim's successor, Sulemin the Magnificent expanded further upon Selim's conquests. After he capturd Belgrade in 1521, he conquered the Southern and Central parts of the Kingdom of Hungary and established rule in the territory of present-day Hungary and other central european territories. He then attacked Vienna in 1529, but failed to take the city after winter forced his retreat. Another attack was planned in 1532, but it was repulsed at the Fortress of Guns. In 1543 after further advances, the Hasburg ruler Ferdinand recognized Ottoman rise in Hungary in '47. During the reign of Suleiman, Wallachia and Moldavia became tributary principalities of the Ottoman Empire, while in the East, the Ottoman's took Baghdad from the Persians to gain control of Mesopotamia and naval access to the Persian Gulf.
As the 16th Century went by, the Empire's naval strength was challenged by the growing sea powers of Western Europe (Portugal in particular) in the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean, and Spice Islands. Because the Ottomans blocked sea-lanes to the East and South, other European powers were forced to find another way to the silk and spice routes, also under Ottoman control. On land, the Ottomans were preoccupied by military campaigns on Persia and Austria. The strain of the conflicts on the Empire's rescources rendered its sea efforts unsuccessful.
During this time, Europe made an effort to curb the Ottoman's control of trade routes, and Western Euripean states began to circumvent the trade monopoly by creating their own routes to Asia. With the influx of Spanish Silver from the new world, a sharp devaluation of the Ottoman currency had a serious negative consequence at all levels of society. After burning Moscow in 1571, the Crimean khan Devlet I Giray, supported by the Ottomans, formed a plan of full conquest of the Russian state. In the next year, the invasion was repeated but repelled at the Battle of Molodi. In Southern Europe, a coalition of Catholic powers formed an alliance to challange the Ottoman's naval strength in the Mediterranean. Their victory over their fleet at the Battle of Lepanto in '71 was a startling blow to the image of the Ottoman's invincibility.
From 1648 to 1656, the Sultanate of Women was a period in which the polotical influence of the Imperial Harem was dominant, as mothers of young sultans exercised power on behalf of their sons. it was not holly unprecedented; Hurrem Sultan, who established herself in the 1530s as Nurbanu's successor, was described as 'a woman of the utmost goodness, courage, and wisdom despite the fact that she thwarted some while rewarding others'. However, the inadequacy of Ibrahim I and the minority accession of Mohammed IV in 1646 created a crisis of rule. This period gave way to the Köprülü Era, which effective control of the Empire was exercised by a sequence of Grand Vixiers from the Köprülü family. The Köprülü Vizierate saw renewed military success with power restored in Transylvania, the conquest of Crete completed in 1669, and expansion into Polish southern Ukraine with the strongholds of Khotin and Kamianets-Podilskyi and the territory of Podolia ceding to Ottoman control in 1676. This period came to an end when Grand Vizer Kara Mustafa Pasha led a huge army to attempt a second siege of Vienna in 1683. The final assault being fatally delayed, the Ottoman forces were swept away by Hasburg, German and Polish forces spearheaded by the Polish King, Jan Sobieski. Only two Sultans in this perioid exercised a strong political and military control of the Empire; Murad IV, who recaptured Yerevan and Baghdad, and Mustafa II who lead the Ottoman counter attack if 1695-96 against the Hasburgs in Hungary.
During the stagnation period, most of the Balkans territory was ceded to Austria, while certain areas like Egypt and Algeria became independent in all but name and came under the influence of Britain and France. A series of wars were also fought between Russia and the Ottoman Empire from the 18th to the 19th century. The period of Ottoman stagnation is characterized as an era of failed reforms. The Tulip Era, named for Ahmed III's love of the tulip flower, the Empire's policy towards Europe underwent a shift. The area was peaceful from 1718 to 1730, after the Ottoman's victory against Russia in 1711 and the following Treaty of Passarowitz brought a pause in warfare. Other tenative reforms were also enacted such as lower taxes. Military reforms began with Selim III who made the first major attempt to modernize the army along European lines, but the efforts were hampered by reactionary movements; partly from the religious leadership, but mainly from the Janissary corps. Jealous of their privileges and opposed to change, they created a Janissary revolt. Selim's efforts cost him not only his throne, but his life too. This was resolved however in a spectacular and bloody fashion by Bahmud II who massacred the Janissary corps in 1826.
The decline of the Ottoman Empire is characterized by an era of modern times; it lost territory on all fronts, and administrative instability due to the breakdown of centralized government despite efforts of reform and organization such as the Tanzimat. During this time, the Empire faced challenges defending itself against invasions and occupations, and as a result, ceased to enter conflicts alone and formed alliances with France, Netherlands, the UK, and Russia. The Crimean War caused an exodus of the Crimean Tatars. During the Tanzimat period, constitutional reforms led to a dairly modern constripted army, banking system reforms, and the replacement of guilds with modern factories. Christian millets also gained privileges, such as in the Armanian National Constitution and the newly formed Armenian National Assembly. The period peaked with the Kanûn-ı Esâsî, written by members of the Young Ottomans. Through a military coup in 1876, the Young Ottomans forced Sultan Abdülaziz to abdicate in favor of Murad V. However, he was mentally ill and was deposed within a few months.
The rise of nationalism swept through many countries in the 19th century, and the Ottoman Empire wasn't immune to this. A burgeoning national consciousness, paired with a growing sense of ethnic nationalism, made nationalistic thought one of the most significant Western ideas imported to the Ottoman Empire. In 1821. the 1st Hellenic Republic was teh first Balkan country to declare itself independent from the Empire and was recognized by the Porte in 1829 after the Greek War of Independence. Cyprus was rented to the British in 1878 in exchange for favores at the Congress of Berlin and Egypt, who had been previously occupied by Napoleon's forces in 1798, was occupied in 1882 by British Forces on the pretext of bringing order. They remained as Ottoman provinces until the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers of WWI in 1914, and Britain annexed these two provinces and Cyprus as a response. Other provinces were lost between 1830 and 1912, starting from Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. The Armenians, who were granted their own constitution and national assembly with the Tanzimat reforms, pressed the Ottoman governemt for more autonomy. A number of Armenian uprisings took place in Anatolia, leading Abdul Hamid II responding to these uprising and attacks by forming the Hamidiye regiments. From 1894-1896, 100-300,000 Armenians were killed in what would be known as the Hamidian massacres.
The İkinci Meşrûtiyet Devri' began in 1908 with the sultan's annoucement of the resoration of the 1876 constitution and the Ottoman Parliment, marking the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. This era is dominated by the polotices of the Committee of Union and Progress. Profiting from the civil strife, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908, but pulled troops out of the Sanjak of Novi Pazar to avoid a war. With the Italo-Turkish War, the Ottoman Empire lost Libya, the Balkan League declared war against the Ottoman Empire who lost it's Balkan territories except for East Thrace and Edirne with the Balkan Wars in 1912-1913. When the Young Turk government signed a reaty forming the Ottoman-German alliance in 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I, in which it gave safe harbor to two German ships who were fleeing British. These ships--once being put into the Ottoman Navy--attacked the Russian port of Sevastopol, this dragging the Empire into the war side of the Central Powers where it took part in the Middle Eastern theater. While there were numerous victories early on, such as the Battle of Gallipoli and the Siege of Kut, there were setbacks such as the Caucasus Campaign against the Russians which ended in disaster.
In 1915, as the Russian Caucasus Army advanced into Eastern Anatolia with the aid of Armenian volenteer units, the Ottoman government decided to issue the Tehcir Law which started the deportation of the ethnic Armenians, mainly from the provinces closest to the Ottoman-Russian front, resulting in what would later be known as the Armenian Genocide. Through forced marches and massacres, the Armenians were taken from their homelands and sent southwards towards Syria and Mesopotamia. Roughly 600,000 to 1.5 million Armenians perished. (To this day, Turkey will still deny any connection towards this, and if he's questioned, will pretend to not know what the other is talking about). Under the Treaty of Sèvres, the new countries created from the former territories currently number 40, including the TRNC. With the occupation of Constantinople, paired up with the occupation of Smyrna, the Turkish national movement was established and won the Turkish War of Independence under the rule of Mustafa Kemal Pasha. The Sultanate was thrown away in 1922, and the last sultan, Mehmed VI Vahdettin left the country on November 17th. The Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 led to the international recognition of the newly formed 'Republic of Turkey' as the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, and the Republic was officially proclaimed on October 29th, in the newest capital, Ankara.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk ('Father Turk') was the first president of the Republic and introduced many radical reforms. During World War II, Turkey remained neutral until 1945 when it joined the side of the Allies as a ceremonial gesture. Difficulties faced by Greece after the war in quelling a communist rebellion, along with demands by the Soviet Union for military bases, prompted the USA to declare teh Truman Doctrine in '47. After participating with the UN in the Korean conflict, Turkey would join NATO in 1952 and become a bulwark against Soviet expansion into the Mediterranean. A decade of violence on the island of Cyprus and the Greek military coup in '74, overthrowing President Makarios and installing Nikos Sampson as dictator, Turkey invaded the Republic of Cyprus. Nine years later, the TRNC was born--and is only recognized by Turkey.